About Me

Most parents and guardians already have a long mental list of things to worry about when keeping children safe. One thing that might not appear on that list, or at least not very high up on it, is tick bites. Unfortunately, in recent months there has been a significant surge of Lyme Disease, a bacterial disease carried by ticks, which can cause serious and often permanent health problems if left untreated. Experts have predicted that this trend will continue, and 2017 may be one of the worst years for the disease yet. The purpose of this blog entry is not to cause undue panic or add to anyone’s list of worries, but to spread some helpful information about Lyme Disease, how to avoid it, and how to identify an infection quickly if one occurs.

Pollution is bad. Recycling is good. These are statements that most people would agree with by now. But recycling isn’t always that simple, especially when it comes to plastic. It seems like plastic is in just about everything we use these days, in one form or another. But what makes the plastic in a phone different than the plastic in a shopping bag? If they seem like entirely different materials, it’s because in many ways they are. Plastics can be mixed with different additives which change their properties. This allows them to fill a range of different purposes, but also affects how they should be used and disposed of. Some plastics cannot be recycled normally, and some can even be toxic if used improperly. It is often impossible to tell what is in a piece of plastic just by looking at it.

Luckily, the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) has devised a quick way to tell different types of plastic apart. Plastic products which can be recycled will typically have the universal recycling symbol somewhere on them. But what many people don’t notice is the small number in the middle of the three arrows. This number, ranging from 1 to 7, is called the RIC (Resin Identification Code). It tells you what group the plastic belongs to, what chemicals have been added to it, and what should be done with it. This guide should help illuminate the important differences between the seven categories of plastic.